Reel v. Real: How Hollywood Turns Fact Into Fiction

I just finished Reel v. Real: How Hollywood Turns Fact Into Fiction by Frank Sanello (a historian whose ouvre includes the Middle Ages as well as film). If Oliver Stone's JFK ticks you off, this is the book for you. It is a screaming, nasty, bitchfest of perversions of history and fact in the name of entertainment.

The movies span the decades and gamut of genres, but of course are concentrated within the past generation. Obviously, approaching some movies this way is like shooting fish in a barrel. JFK is one of these, but so are The Ten Commandments, and Pearl Harbor. Yet, most of the films are wrong in ways that are less commonly known.

Some movies come off particularly badly: Quills celebrating the Marquis de Sade as a free speech advocate, The Patriot by insulting the reputations of just about everyone involved, Bugsy and Bonnie and Clyde for inventing most of their stories about the "nice" criminals,  and The Last Emperor because of its blatant sympathy for Mao's communists.

All the movies get trashed (that is, after all, the idea of this book), but some come off better than others: From Hell with Johnny Depp/Jack the Ripper vehicle, Silkwood, and Oliver Stone's Nixon come to mind.

Others seem to be targeted out of poor sportsmanship. For example, there are many things wrong with the whole story of Erin Brockovich, but the book focuses mostly on what it perceives as unfair division of the spoils. Shakespeare In Love gets the axe too, but I always thought of that as a fantasy, so I didn't really see the problem with it.

Lastly, the book is also full of bizarre tidbits about the movies, actors, and directors. The latter come off particularly badly; James Cameron for example insisted that huge parts of the Titanic set be real even though there was no need, only a budget. And I think my best laugh may have been the story about the American marketers of the British film about King George III who insisted that it be called The Madness of King George because they were sure American audiences would think it was a sequel otherwise.

Comments

[john top]

Haven't seen an Oliver Stone flick since being disappointed by the Doors, but wasn't it just portraying a misguided Jim Garrison's version of the events? Or did it get Jim Garrison's story wrong?

Why the "of course" when focusing on movies of the last generation? Is it during the last generation that social conservatives see the liberals really taking over hollywood? I mean, the glorification of criminals in movies goes back to Howard Hawkes' Scarface, distorted history goes back to at least Shakesphere, and Casablanca doesn't make the Nazis look as brutish I suppose they were. Maybe Oedipus didn't really love his mom as much as tragedy portrays?

[Dave Tufte]

Lighten up John!

I don't know if Stone got Garrison's story wrong or not. I merely used that as everyone's favorite example of a movie that doesn't match up with the facts as commonly accepted.

And ... the "of course" refers to the fact that most of the movies in the book are from the last generation, because most of the people reading the book in this day will have a better chance of having seen them. This book actually has quite a few examples from before (say) 1975 - the difference is that I don't know those movies as well, so there were a bunch I'd never seen.